The Seventh Angel - Страница 45

Ann turned away from this vision of ersatz splendor, and reached through the open door of the bathroom to flip on the vanity lights.

“Get in, and shut the door,” she said. “That hallway light is killing me.”

She shuffled back into the room, hearing Sheldon close the door behind himself. She flopped face down onto the bed like a rag doll.

She clamped her eyes tightly closed, and then forced herself to open them again. “Did you get through to Powder and Booty?”

Powder was Sheldon’s three year-old cocker spaniel, a shaggy buff-colored powder-puff of a dog, with a lolling tongue and a golden disposition. ‘Booty’ was Ann’s name for Buddy, the eight month-old Yorkshire Terrier-Chihuahua mix that Sheldon had gotten as a companion to Powder. Ann had taken to calling the smaller dog Booty, because he seemed to take savage glee in leaping up to nip unwary people on the rump. The scruffy little rat was, quite literally, a pain in the butt.

“I got a call through to my mom,” Sheldon said. “She’s scared half out of her wits, but otherwise she’s doing okay. I’m glad she lives up in the hills, because she tells me that Oceanside is coming unglued.”

He sighed. “Powder and Buddy are doing fine, by the way.”

Talking about Booty made Ann gradually realize that her own booty was currently on display. She was dressed in her bed clothes: an old Phantom of the Opera tee-shirt and faded green panties. Her butt was pointed straight at the ceiling.

With a nearly-convulsive jerk, she rolled over, adjusting her tee-shirt to cover her panties. Had Sheldon peeked at her ass when her back was turned? He’d almost certainly wanted to. Between Stairmaster and Pilate’s, her butt was in pretty good shape, and she knew that Sheldon was healthy and hetero. He probably hadn’t looked, though. Sheldon had an annoying habit of doing the right thing, even when nobody was watching.

She tugged the shirt down a little lower, trying to make sure her panties were safely out of view. “What time is it?”

Sheldon checked his watch. “Almost three-thirty.”

“In the morning? Three-thirty AM?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s AM,” Sheldon said. “It’s still dark outside. But this is Japan, and the rules may be different here. Maybe the sun doesn’t come up on any particular schedule.”

Ann yawned. “Why …” Her question was interrupted by a second yawn. “… are you waking me up at three-thirty in the freaking morning, Sheldon?”

“You need to get packed,” Sheldon said. “The Navy wants us back.”

Ann yawned a third time. “The Navy wants us back where?”

“Back on the ship,” Sheldon said. “USS Towers. I got a call from corporate about twenty minutes ago. The Navy wants us to do some more work with Mouse. Apparently, Captain Bowie asked for us by name. They’re sending a van to drive us to the Air Force Base at Yakota. We catch a helo flight from there.”

Ann forced her eyes wide enough to stare at Sheldon. He was still standing near the door, illuminated by the bathroom vanity lights. “I’m the tech, she said. Why did corporate call you?”

Sheldon grinned. “They called us both. But you turn your cell phone off at night. I leave mine on. I imagine you’ve got a voicemail on your phone right now.”

Ann rubbed her eyes, and rotated her head to loosen her neck muscles. “What kind of work does the Navy expect us to do?”

“I don’t know,” Sheldon said. “I talked to Rick Kramer from Norton corporate liaison. He couldn’t give details over the phone. Evidently it’s all pretty hush-hush. But Rick did say that it’s going to be dangerous. We have to sign liability waivers and security agreements.”

Ann shook her head. “I’m not at the Navy’s beck and call. They can’t order me to go anywhere. And they certainly can’t order me to intentionally put myself in danger.”

“Nobody’s ordering us,” Sheldon said. “The Navy’s asking for us. They need our help with something.”

He shrugged. “I’m going. There aren’t any flights to the States anyway. Might as well go do some work and earn some hazard pay. It beats sitting around a hotel room the size of a shoebox, watching Japanese game shows.”

“I’m not going,” Ann said. “The Navy can kiss off.”

“Okay,” Sheldon said. “I’ll tell Rick, and they’ll send somebody else.”

“They can’t do that,” Ann snapped. “Mouse is my baby. I did half the fabrication, and I wrote most of the code. Nobody knows that robot like I do.”

“I understand that,” Sheldon said. “But Mouse doesn’t belong to you, Ann. It’s a very expensive prototype that happens to be the property of Norton Deep Water Systems. And Norton has an extremely lucrative contract to build a few hundred Mouse units for the United States Navy. Ann, you know that corporate isn’t going to piss off their numero-uno customer. If the Navy wants a Mouse technician, Norton’s going to send them one. If it’s not you, it’ll be somebody else. But it’s going to happen. You know that.”

He turned back toward the door. “I’ll call Rick, and tell him to get another tech out here.”

Ann sighed. “Alright! I’ll go, damn it! Just get out of here so I can pack and get dressed.”

Sheldon checked his watch again. “The van will be here in about forty minutes. Why don’t we meet in the downstairs coffee shop in half an hour?”

“Okay,” Ann said. “Have some caffeine ready when I get down there. Otherwise, I may have to kill you.”

“Will do.” He reached for the doorknob.

“Sheldon?”

He paused. “Yeah?”

“Did you look at my butt when my back was turned?”

“Ah … no. I thought about it, but it didn’t seem polite.”

Ann threw a pillow at him. “You’re too freaking nice for your own good. Now, get the hell out of my room and let me get dressed.”

Sheldon laughed. “Meet you downstairs.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Ann walked through the front door of the coffee shop. The lighted plastic sign by the entrance identified the shop as Hero Coffee Star. The accompanying logo included a bright red Art Deco coffee pot, rendered in the style of a 1950s Flash Gordon rocket ship.

The interior décor of the coffee shop followed the retro-science fiction theme. The walls were airbrushed with cartoon murals of alien lunarscapes, dotted with improbable-looking domed cities in which the buildings all resembled old-school jukeboxes.

Sheldon was seated at a small round table that had been silk-screened to look like the planet Saturn. As promised, he had a cup of coffee waiting on the table in front of Ann’s chair.

He was looking the other way as she approached, and humming a strange little tune — bouncy, but with an odd rhythm.

Ann sat down and started doctoring the coffee with sugar and powdered creamer. “Do you really have to make that much noise this early in the morning?”

“It’s stuck in my head,” Sheldon said. “From a Japanese commercial.”

He hummed the tune again, and used his spoon to gently tap out the notes against the rim of his coffee cup. The musical clink of the metal on porcelain seemed to goad him into song. “Kitty paws,” he sang. “Like Santa Claus, but kitty paws…”

Ann snorted, and had to grab a napkin to keep from spewing coffee. “Kitty paws? What were they advertising?”

Sheldon took his own swallow of coffee. “Have you ever watched Japanese commercials?”

“No.”

“You can never tell what they’re advertising,” Sheldon said. “At least I can’t. They don’t make any sense to me, but a lot of them are pretty funny.”

“I don’t care what language it’s in,” Ann said. “How can you watch a commercial and not know what they’re advertising?”

“The language isn’t the problem,” Sheldon said. “It’s the cultural subtext. The Japanese contextual cues are totally alien to me. They go right over my head.”

Ann snorted again. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” She set down her coffee cup. “I don’t claim to understand people, but I always know when somebody’s trying to sell me something. Describe this commercial to me, and I’ll tell you what they’re selling.”

Sheldon leaned back in his seat. “Okay … Let’s see … It starts out with a view of the earth, seen from outer space. The camera zooms in closer, until you see the Japanese islands, from great altitude and through cloud cover. Then the camera drops through the clouds, and you’re looking down on a major city — Tokyo, maybe. It zooms in even closer, past the tops of the buildings, and then down to a beautiful little Japanese tea garden, sandwiched between two enormous glass skyscrapers. In the middle of the tea garden is a black European sports sedan. Something really sharp looking. Maybe a Saab. I don’t remember. And draped across the hood of the sports sedan is a tall dark haired woman, European or American, with legs that go on forever. She’s wearing a strapless black evening gown, slit way up the thigh to show plenty of leg, a pair of black stiletto heals, and a little headband with black Cat Woman ears attached. The narrator is talking a mile-a-minute in Japanese, while an off-camera choir of little Japanese girls sing the jingle in English. “Kitty paws … Like Santa Claus, but kitty paws …”

Sheldon sat up, and took another sip of coffee. “Then the camera pulls in tight on the tall woman’s face. She does sort of a sexy-pouty thing with her lips, raises an eyebrow, and says, “the excitement has arrived …”